Aging and Dying
W e incarnate on earth to learn various lessons in each lifetime. No matter the focus of our mortal journey for each life, one experience is inevitable: our death. Some of us will die in our prime, suddenly and early. But many of us will face the challenges of old age, noticing our bodies deteriorate and our minds dim as our time on earth ends.
By living to an old age, with its health challenges, we have an opportunity to mindfully come to terms with our impending mortality. This is important in an age when death is not easily or gracefully accepted. In time past, early death was common. Infant mortality rates were high, and most of those who became adults still did not live long lives. Advances in sanitation, improvements in nutrition, and the success of modern medicine means that now most of us do not encounter death until we reach middle or older age.
We arrive on earth to grow as a soul, and leaving earth is another opportunity for our soul to grow. The decline of our physical body reminds us that the material world is impermanent. As we face the ephemeral nature of our body, some of us will open to the existence of our immortal soul. Reviewing our lives helps us come to terms with the choices we’ve made and the way we have lived. Instead of fearing or denying our approaching death, we can find peace and acceptance, ease and grace.
How each of us faces aging and approach our mortality varies. In some cases in the previous chapters, people experienced death at the end of their past lives. They left their bodies in different ways, passing slowly, quickly, easily, or while resisting. Knowing what may await us and deciding ahead of time how we would like to approach our death can be comforting.
In this chapter, we will meet Gayle, Jacquelyn, Frauke, and Stan as they experience their past lives and their life between lives, giving us wisdom about the very human process of aging and dying.
Losing Independence
We can become grumpy and angry when we feel that our body and mind are letting us down and our productive years are over. Growing old is challenging when we know that success in our modern world is associated with strength, beauty, intelligence, and, above all, independence. Age therefore becomes the great betrayer. The more we are attached to this belief, the rougher the ride to the end will be.
Gayle, an extremely positive, worldly woman of ninety-one, decides to check in on her soul’s progress and satisfy her curiosity about the Life Between Lives work of Dr. Newton before she leaves the planet. Having had two close brushes with death earlier in her life, accepting her mortality was easy for Gayle, but losing her independence was not.
Assisted by her younger husband, Ben, Gayle arrives for her session with a list of questions that include, “Why do I have such pain in my feet and such terrible balance?” While she is grateful for Ben’s assistance, she is indignant and annoyed that she is losing her independence.
During her regression, Gayle is reminded that her childhood lacked love and attention from her parents. Yet she did recapture some tender and loving early childhood moments with her nanny, Alma, and Hooti, the cook. She then progresses into a past life as Elizabeth, a twenty-one-year-old woman of an aristocratic English family. There, standing surrounded by the wood-paneled walls of her father’s library in a fine mansion, she is hot under the collar. Her parents have chosen a man for her to marry that would forge family alliances. Her father let her know that she was expected to comply. Riding gloves in hand, she storms out of the house, calls for her horse, and rides hard through the countryside.
I won’t marry that man! He is almost twice my age and I just won’t do it. No man can own me. I won’t have it. I don’t care about family alliances. Father can’t make me. I have my own means. That is one good thing about being an aristocrat. I have my grandfather’s endowment.
And with that, the decision was made. Elizabeth leaves her childhood home with her mother in tears and her father offering nothing other than a stony glare. She would never return.
Elizabeth went on to create a very independent and self-sufficient life. She never married and never had any children of her own. Although she used her wealth to support a local orphanage, she didn’t spend time in the orphanage; rather she occupied her time riding and spending time with her intellectual friends. We meet Elizabeth on the day of her death at the age of sixty.
I feel very weak. I am not sure that I am sick, but I feel very weak and tired. I am in my bedroom sitting in a chair. I don’t want to be in bed. I am beside my bed and I have a chair and small desk. I am sitting at that, playing with a pen and looking across the bed to the window. Just looking outside toward the daylight.
The practitioner asks what thoughts and feelings Elizabeth is experiencing and if she understands why she is dying.
I am thinking that I am just tired. Tired enough to go to sleep and not wake up. It’s time for me. I have had a good life. I have enjoyed the life I have led. But now it is time. I don’t really know what is taking my energy; I think it is physical, but nothing obvious, except my body is quite thin.
Her practitioner asks how she feels about her life as Elizabeth.
It was a good life; I enjoyed my life. Because I am so tired, I don’t mind a bit that I am leaving. I have left a trust fund for the orphanage. I have done what I can for them, and they will go on being taken care of. Strangely enough I didn’t get emotionally involved at all with the children.
I have decided that I might as well lie down on the bed and just drift. I slip off my shoes and get comfortable on the bed and it is restful [sighs heavily]. I am just so tired.
Gayle becomes quiet and is asked about what she is experiencing.
I seem to be … well, I am not in the body anymore. I am looking down at the body. It’s very quiet. Elizabeth is alone. I just say goodbye to my body, quite unattached. Sooner or later someone will come into the room to check on her or bring her something, and they will find her and take care of things.
Gayle’s Alma and Hootie soon come to greet her for a beautiful afterlife reunion. Although they were only part of her early life for a few years, Gayle understands that they are part of her soul family and were there to make sure she wasn’t alone as a child.
It is not surprising that Elizabeth calmly faced the moment of her death, given her independent, strong, matter-of-fact nature. Having completed her reunion, her practitioner asks Gayle if she has any thoughts about her life as Elizabeth.
Why should we talk about that when my questions are far more present?
Gayle seems to want to avoid any discussion about Elizabeth. However, later in the session, when Gayle meets her council, her practitioner encourages her to ask them about her soul’s progress as Elizabeth.
Oh God, what a question. They are a bit noncommittal. They say I did well enough. They are pointing out that there is still a very strong independent streak in me, in this life, where I prefer to be rather like Elizabeth. Strong, independent, and able to row my own boat. There is a lot of that in me still.
The practitioner inquires whether the guides can help Gayle understand if this is a quality that she is developing or if there is something she is learning from this characteristic.
It’s very much a learning. Um, they are saying that I need to learn when to let go and let somebody else do something for me. I don’t have to be so independent. There is nothing wrong with being independent, but it shouldn’t be the “be-all and end-all” of my life. This is something I need to learn.
I’m at the very end of this life and I am learning to accept dependence. I have been thoroughly independent most of this life. But for the past year, I have had to accept a great deal of dependency and it sticks in my throat. Fortunately, it is Ben I need to care for me, to depend upon. My car was taken away from me and that was a great loss of independence. I can’t drive the family car! I am literally not big and strong enough to physically drive it. They are telling me, quite definitely, that my loss of balance is part of the lesson.
Gayle now understands why she is shown her life as Elizabeth and explains that, while she can accept it with her head, her heart has trouble with letting go of the desire to be independent.
I can see that it probably won’t happen in this life, but at least what I can accept at this point is that I have an opportunity to internalize the acceptance of dependence and experience it. This is hard, because come hell or high water, I will be independent in many ways. I have never been dependent before. And if this is a lesson I must learn, well, FINE! I must learn it.
I needed to know there was a point to it. There clearly is a point to being dependent as I am. And thank God it is with Ben.
It has been almost like living two lives in one life. I needed the independent experience of that first half of my life, which could have been a whole life, but now I get to learn about dependence. It was clearly arranged that Ben would show up later in this life to assist me this way.
Although I have far fewer years to live than the ones that are behind me, I still need to accept dependence, and there is still learning to be done. And I am not being told exactly what that will look like. That’s for me to discover. My council is showing amusement and saying, “Isn’t it high time you realized it?”
Gayle thanks her council, acknowledging that it has taken her a long time in her current life to realize that every challenge is a lesson. She also explains that having her partner, Ben, show up later in her life was a brilliant life-planning choice. She knows that she could have never allowed herself to be dependent on her first husband. Four years after her Life Between Lives session, Gayle expresses her deep love and gratitude for having Ben in her life.
When Alzheimer’s Is Healing
The emotional and physical strain of losing our cognitive abilities, or watching a family member fail in this way, is very difficult to experience. What we may not appreciate is the service the afflicted individual is offering to the family, or what they themselves are experiencing.
Frauke, a woman in her mid-forties, married with two adult children, is suffering immensely watching her father’s Alzheimer’s condition cause him to deteriorate. The situation is further complicated by a long-standing family conflict stemming from tensions between her mother and siblings in their childhood. Frauke seeks to understand and heal the family conflict and to connect with her father in her Life Between Lives session.
Frauke’s mother favors her oldest brother, holding him up as the perfect role model. He is inaccessible and arrogant to Frauke and her younger brothers. They become insecure and obstructed in their own development, lacking inner strength. Her father, feeling helpless, has stayed outside of the conflict, often being away at work. In adulthood, emotional coldness and estrangement develops between her and her younger siblings on one side and her mother and oldest brother on the other. Their father’s Alzheimer’s disease has brought the unresolved tensions to the surface.
After arriving in the spirit world, Frauke recognizes and senses the timeless, loving connectedness of all that exists. She meets her guide, who assists her to experience her luminous spirit self, a very bright multicolored energy, pulsating with spiritedness. She expands into an all-embracing, deep respect for all other souls and an honoring of All That Is.
Frauke’s guide takes her to meet with her soul family, where she recognizes her oldest brother.
He smiles, a bit cheeky yet lovingly, and says, “Hi little sister, you bullhead.”
My father is here too, with an expression of love and compassion. He wonders if I know that he can still hear me, even though he has not yet passed over to spirit.
The practitioner inquires whether she wants to ask him about the meaning of his Alzheimer’s disease.
He says that we all must leave this planet one day. That the physical body dissolves and the soul light becomes free. Yet love continues and stays with the family, like a light ball. It is his love which can reunite us all into a new whole unity.
You are all doing it well, he says. Think of your younger brother who cried at my bedside recently. It’s very unusual for him to express his feelings. You saw him like that for the first time. This is one of the messages of my disease. He says that it is a bit difficult to explain.
He is telling me that there is always an energy residing in the disease that can transform the people close to the sick person. I could see that for my brother’s soul when he cried at my father’s bedside. My father now says we should understand that we all dismantle while passing, and the freed energy has a special function for those left behind.
The practitioner suggests that she inquire whether her father’s energy is already in the spirit world.
He says that sometimes he is in the light; however, he can’t yet leave because something down here has still to be completed. The conflict between my oldest brother and me is holding him here.
The practitioner asks whether her father can assist her in any way to support the healing between her and her brother.
He is showing me that I can see my brother’s emotional injuries, his traumas.
Now, we are building a ball of healing energy; it is not yet whole. I am putting my arm around my father, and at the same time embracing my mother. We bring my brother into the circle and my father strokes his head. Through this gesture, he tells me that I can forgive my brother. I shouldn’t restrict my perception of him to what I see on the outside but see him instead from inside and connect with him there. Then the circle can close.
From the perspective of our immortal soul, forgiveness becomes the healer, as Frauke was shown. All human anger, resentment, and hurt just melts away, as we come to know, directly, that there is only pure love when we meet soul to soul. In the physical world, the old stories of who did what to whom can come back. Putting this forgiveness into action on earth can be challenging. The practitioner checks that Frauke has embraced the teaching of her father’s spirit and asks whether she can now hold the experience of seeing past her brother’s hurts and traumas to forgive him.
Yes, I can, and I do see my brother in a new light. My father says he hasn’t much time available on earth, however, he doesn’t want to leave before this will take place. He wants to contribute to this peace. Although he is well inside, he wants to go home and return to the “light.”
Turning back to the question of the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on her father, the practitioner asks whether her father is suffering in any way from developing the disease and from the symptoms.
He tells me that his soul is clear. His physical symptoms are unpleasant but, he says, we perceive them as much worse than he himself does. The aches are inconvenient, yet they are not real pains, because he is still luminous inside. Through his eyes, he can see very clearly. He tells me that our belief that the mind doesn’t work any longer is not correct. The light inside understands everything. I see him now with a clear, keen expression. The confusion and craziness we often see in his eyes, and the others with this disease, doesn’t give the complete picture. He says his inner self is full of light. It is true light.
One year later, after the passing of her father, Frauke wrote to her practitioner.
I had given my father a promise, whose fulfillment he had desired before he could leave this earth. I made good on this promise, of course not alone, as the souls of my brothers have been partners. The way it happened still moves me to tears. One week after my father’s last wish, of having our family reunited, he found peace at home in his bed, holding my mother’s hand. The souls know better than the human minds; they know what to do and what is essential. His dearest wish was immensely important to our family. When I stood with my brothers in front of his coffin, I felt the same image as in the session and I knew this meant the fulfillment of my father’s longing. It was a true legacy given by him to our family. He clearly knew the meaning it had for us. I feel such deep gratitude for everything he had gifted me in this life, and also on the soul plane. My Life Between Lives journey has helped me more than anything else to understand the meaning of his years-long suffering and pains.
Checking in with Frauke two years later, we see the lasting value of her Life Between Lives experience.
Today, our family relationships are very good, warm-hearted, and familiar, even if our older brother still has difficulty expressing this. We have regular contact with each other. Meanwhile, I have a deep and loving bond with my mom. My Life Between Lives experience has been the key to this change. Without it, I wouldn’t have found a way of understanding and processing it. However, this atmosphere of compassion and love needs to be lived every day anew. I must learn this as well. Through my father and his disease, which I call the dementia “gate of light,” I got a soul-level, deep understanding of the world.
Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally, an ailing parent, sibling, or loved one often brings the issues of family conflict, resentment, pain, and trauma to the surface. Estranged siblings meeting at the dying one’s bedside can squabble about what mom or dad would want, igniting old family dramas. Yet the situation also holds the opportunity for healing. Perhaps the dying one resists passing because of the discordance in the family, or perhaps they chose the suffering itself to bring healing. Frauke’s experience in meeting her father at the soul level revealed a deeper purpose and more hopeful understanding about how we choose the manner and timing of leaving this mortal plane. Offering the opportunity for our loved ones to heal though our deaths may just be our final act of service.
Dying with Ease and Grace
Jacquelyn, an intelligent, healthy, and active woman in her early sixties, decides to explore a Life Between Lives experience in preparation for the next phase of her life. She will be retiring from her career as a counseling psychologist and wonders if there is a new purpose for her life energy and time.
During Jacquelyn’s first past-life regression, she explores her life as a young, orphaned girl named Teresa, living on the dirty streets of old London, surviving only through the kindness of others and an inner determination. In her teens, she meets a loving man and marries, making a simple life in the small community where they settle. She is respected in her community as a wise woman and offers her council freely and lovingly.
When guided to move to the last day of her life, she finds herself resting in her bedroom. Her practitioner asks her to explain what she is experiencing.
I feel chest pain. It’s been around for a while and getting worse. It really hurts today, so I have come to lie down. There are others in the home, but I am alone. I feel comfort in hearing voices around.
Jacquelyn is guided to review some of the key aspects of her life as Teresa.
That first part of my life, when I am an orphan living on the streets, wears me out some, but it’s been a good life. I’m tired. Tired of living. I do know that I felt love when I was young, before my parents died, and I am able to carry that into the loving relationship with my husband. But I feel some melancholy generally, like “woe is me.” It is about the loss of my parents so early. I didn’t ’t know how I was going to survive; I was only five. Someone looked out for me for a while. I might have had a brother, but we were separated after a while. It is as if that grief never leaves me.
Teresa acknowledges that her early experience of losing the love of her parents and her ability to carry on, assists her to become a beautiful, wise elder that people seek for counsel. She also finds love with her husband, inner strength, and a good moral compass of knowing what is right and wrong. She fondly remembers people bringing her reciprocal gifts for her compassion and counsel. She lovingly remembers the lunches that she made for her husband and his gratitude for her kindness. She expresses a sense of pride for conducting herself well in life and acknowledges that others saw it too. Teresa, the pain in her chest intensifying, knows that she will soon pass.
I’m lying here wondering whether to call others or not. I am mostly thinking about my nephew, wondering whether he would like to be here as I die, but also considering what I want. I am kind of enjoying the peace.
I decide to call him. I want to tell him one more time that I love him and thank him for caring for me. I have talked about my life somewhat to him, but I will share a bit more. I mostly want to tell him I am glad to go now.
I sense that I am detaching. It’s kind of weird now, because I have a sense that nothing has changed in who I am, but I am no longer aware of being in that life. It is now just fuzzy. I am not aware of my body. I just rise, of course. I can feel myself drifting up, like a beautiful relaxation after a physical exercise.
With opportunity to reflect on her life as Teresa, and a passing that could be described as present, calm, and peaceful, Jacquelyn is not prepared for what her council will show her next. Jacquelyn has identified a reoccurring problem with vertigo, or dizziness, due to an inner ear issue. It is getting worse as she ages, having the potential to limit her very active lifestyle. After asking the council her most pressing questions about her upcoming retirement, she asks if they can assist her to heal the vertigo. The council takes her to another past life.
There is a sense of being on a boat and being in trouble. It’s wild and stormy and the boat is sinking. Um, I thought water was my friend but WOW, it is such a big force. I am so anxious and fearful. I know I am going to die. I feel sick, nauseous.
We are on a smallish boat, like a fishing boat. There’s a couple of other people and we are all in this together. We have worked together to try to ride this out, but the boat is breaking up. Things are crashing everywhere. Oh, I am in the water now, terrified.
Slipping beneath the waves, Jacquelyn leaves her nauseous body, fearful and anxious and feeling an overwhelming sadness. What a powerful death imprint. She did not have the ease and confidence she experienced as Teresa. Her last thoughts were about her family and the distress they would suffer, never knowing what happened to her after she left for that fateful fishing trip.
Jacquelyn’s practitioner intervenes and asks her to go back to that moment in time when she was standing on the sinking ship. While there, she is guided to remember the truths she knows from dying in other lives. She remembers she is an immortal being, that dying is the process of awakening to her immortal self and returning home means returning to all those she loves.
I am calmer this time, but there is some nausea. There is chaos everywhere, the ship is rolling, and the waves are crashing. We all know there is a risk of being in the ocean. We have done what we can and now we just see if we will survive it or not.
I am back in the water now and I am sensing the sadness and loss of dying young. I know I will be able to reach out to my family once I am home. It is quiet as I slip under the water. I am not feeling the nausea, but my head is feeling quite “dizzy” as I feel myself floating up. It’s like my head is releasing the residual energy of the trauma I experienced.
Several months after her session, Jacquelyn writes about her experience of dying.
The biggest surprise of my first past-life regression as Teresa was the experience of my death. It felt like a non-event! I, my consciousness, did not alter as I became detached from my body. Leading up to this peaceful death, I did experience some fear—of the unknown. Lying on the bed with pain in my chest, I came to know somehow that it would be okay to die and that I could drift off when I chose.
I felt sorrow at saying goodbye to my family, but then knew that I would be able to still love and touch them energetically, more than they would be able to interact with me. In my life now, I am heartened to realize that my father and others really do love and support me from their world in spirit, more easily than I can be conscious of connecting with them.
Jacquelyn was able not only to gain confidence in her ability to come to her natural death in this life with ease and grace, she was able to understand where that momentary hesitation when fear arose was imprinted. Not only was she able to “redo” dying calmly under the traumatic circumstances of drowning at sea, but she was able to clear the fear imprint and cure her propensity for sea sickness. She confirmed this later in an email after taking a summer boat trip. She was also left with a deep respect and honor for the forces of nature.
So often, the power of a Life Between Lives session unfolds over time as we take the experience into our daily lives. This is the case for Jacquelyn regarding the stress she is feeling to know what she should be doing once she retires. In her follow-up email, she shares this beautiful insight.
The other aspect of my session that particularly stood out for me is how perfectly it spoke to my current life situation. I’m on the brink of retiring. I feel vulnerable, as I wonder who I am without my professional identity as a counselor. In my life as Teresa, I was a farmer’s wife whose days were spent doing mundane tasks. Reflecting on that life I feel comfort in the mundane. It was and is enough to be an ordinary person.
Welcome Home
Regardless of how we leave the body, one thing that is universal is the love and support available to us as we enter our immortal home. Through many thousands of Life Between Lives sessions conducted all around the world with individuals from every culture, with belief and even lack of belief of an afterlife, we know that our soul is welcomed home. We are welcomed, regardless of whether we have led a life of virtue or not, whether we are young or old, ready or resistant. This is demonstrated in the case of Stan, who receives just what he needs at the end of his life.
Stan experiences a past life as an indigenous elder who is injured and lying on his deathbed after defending his village. He is in a longhouse with his daughter, Tisha, expressing his sadness at letting down his tribe. He failed to provide wise advice, advice that would have avoided the loss of so many of the tribe in the battle. He grieves leaving his daughter and the tribe. Stan describes the gentle welcome he receives from those on the other side.
I’m sensing Tisha is holding me in great comfort. We have such faith in each other. It is beyond words now. I am feeling a kind of sadness for all that has happened. I remind her that I will always look out for her and that, if ever she calls upon me, I will send my love and guidance. I feel confident about that. I am now feeling a bit more at ease.
It’s good to know that I can leave. My body could live on a bit more, but I don’t have to. It is nice to go when ready. And it’s happening, I am drifting off. Now I don’t see her in front of me in that way. There is a lightening of my body and the intensity of sadness is gone.
I am feeling so much love. There are open arms all around me. I am getting closer. I am taking my time to be embraced. It is all so overwhelming. They all know what I have been through [crying]. And the love that I feel is that love of absolute acceptance, but also appreciation. They know that life is hard, that it has its challenges. It is kind of like they are saying “well done, and now we are all here to welcome you back.” Well done, as if they would all write me a good reference [laughs]. Those open arms are so touching.
I no longer feel the tiredness. My energy is restored to what feels like a natural flow. I’m just basking in the feeling now. There is a sense that they are all there for as long as is needed. There is no urgency. It is like being totally supported to go at my own rhythm.
Stan is moved by the welcome he receives in his past life. Like those who die and return after a near-death experience, Stan knows how gentle death can be even when we carry guilt and sadness at the end.
Preparing for our death is wise, as is emotionally accepting our decline into old age. The cases in this chapter offer great wisdom for facing our decline and death with grace and ease. Gayle showed us how to let go of our independence, which is a task assigned to anyone who lives a long life and who seeks to be content.
Diseases of the elderly such as dementia and Alzheimer’s appear to be greatly debilitating to sufferers. Relatives feel sad and disturbed watching their loved one’s decline. Frauke’s Life Between Lives session is most reassuring for anyone whose loved ones are suffering from these conditions. Her father’s message tells us there is no need to grieve.
We have no need to fear death either. Jacquelyn, in her life as Teresa, was afraid of death right at the end of her life. In her other past life, she was not ready to die. Fear of death is common in our world. Even those with a strong belief in an afterlife, like Teresa, can remain under the influence of this fear energy. Jacquelyn’s two past lives taught us how to let go of our fears, accept our death, and pass over peacefully.
Some people struggle with death because they regret decisions they made in their lives. Stan’s case shows us how to let go. There is no judgment on the other side, just welcoming arms.
Coming to terms with death while we are still alive is a sagacious choice. We prepare for other events. Why not this one which is waiting for all of us? The cases in this chapter show us that there is nothing to fear. Being prepared helps us pass over peacefully, gently, and gracefully.